


Start your year off right

by dancinguniverse



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 16:16:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5973825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/pseuds/dancinguniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of the HBO War Slash Valentine's Exchange: Mols asked for "Winnix doctors! AU in which Lew and Dick are in a secret relationship and pass the New Year Eve together, working." I live to serve!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Start your year off right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mols](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mols/gifts).



Nix ducks into the elevator just before the doors slide shut, and they jerk themselves back open with an annoyed sounding chime. Dick, already facing the opposite doors expectantly, glances over his shoulder. He doesn’t look surprised, but Nix will take the way his body curves to follow his head, the way his face relaxes from an absent frown to the soft look he reserves for Nix alone. Nix sticks his hands in his pockets, pleased with his timing. “Going my way?”

“Going to do my rounds,” Dick demurs, but he keeps looking at Nix, the tiniest curl at the edge of his mouth. It’s been all of an hour since they parted ways in the hospital garage, trading quick kisses under the parking structure’s shaded secrecy before making their ways in through separate entrances. But the short time apart doesn't matter; Nix has always been helpless against Dick’s every move and expression. When Nix steps forward with an answering smile, crowding Dick into the corner, Dick doesn’t move back, but he raises his eyebrows, jerking his chin toward the ceiling. “Cameras, Nix,” he says softly. “You want security to get an eyeful?”

“They’d understand.” But Nix eases himself back against the adjacent wall, flashing him a leer the cameras won’t pick up. “Your planes and trains are irresistible.”

Dick glances down at his cartoonisih scrubs doubtfully. “I wear them for the kids.”

The elevator doors slide open with another chime and Nix pushes off the wall with a bounce. “Just a bonus for me, then.”

Dick ignores him, striding off down the hall with purpose and leaving Nix to match his pace or fall behind. Nix follows.

Dick steps into the nurses’ station and nods a greeting to Perconte and O’Keefe, who barely look up from their work. “No changes, Doc,” Perconte reports absently. “Quiet as a church up here.” Nix can see he’s playing Candy Crush on his phone, but as long as there’s not work to be done, Dick isn’t going to say anything. Dick checks into his patient files, scanning over the logs anyway. It’s his way, and the rest of the staff are used to it.

Nix meanders farther down the hall a few feet until he can peer around the corner into the visitors lounge and the TV there, stuck at its usual quiet hum. There won’t be any fighting for the channels tonight. Ryan Seacrest is already bundled up against the cold and leaning into the camera, Taylor Swift crowded into the frame as well just now. Behind them, the ball perches at the top of its tower, glittering brightly. Less than four hours to midnight. He keeps half an eye back down the hall, not trusting Dick to suddenly charge off without him.

In fact, Dick only seems to realize Nix is still there a few minutes later, when Taylor Swift has already been replaced by Sara Bareilles.

“You bucking for a transfer?” Dick calls down the hallway, and Nix looks back at him. “Or just lost?”

“Please,” Nix snorts. “You’re the one who can’t find the cafeteria three days out of five.” This is grossly untrue in fact — but accurate enough in spirit. Dick can find his way around his own pediatric wing but the cafeteria is one of the only places outside of it he can find with any guarantee. He doesn’t bother to argue the point. “Thought I’d tag along for your rounds. I’m on call, but no one’s calling.”

Dick shrugs and stands to head out, and Nix takes this for the acceptance that it is, drifting back up the hallway with another wistful glance back at the television.

“Oh, hey,” Perconte calls after them as they step away. “Mrs. Dukeman’s here.” He watches Dick for his reaction, worry bright in his eyes, and Nix, watching just as carefully from the opposite side, wishes he wouldn’t.

Dick hesitates for only a second, though, and then smooths his face over again. “Thanks, Frank. I got it.”

Nix follows Dick down the hall but at the door to 5103, Dick hesitates again. “Give me a minute, will you?” He doesn’t look at Nix, but Nix can see his face drawn tight. Nix glances through the gap in the curtains, sees the bowed head over the too-small body in the bed, and he squeezes Dick’s arm.

“I’ll be right out here.”

Dick pulls the door shut behind him when he enters, and Nix doesn’t bother to eavesdrop. Even he has his limits, and much as Dick is his concern, the mother about to lose her child doesn’t need Nix’s intrusion. Nix won’t say that this was his reason for shadowing Dick in the first place, and he’s not always sure if Dick notices Nix’s patterns of care. But he’s been hearing stories about Dukeman for two weeks now, the stories growing shorter as his condition deteriorates, and lately if Nix asks how things are going, he only gets a frown and a quick, negative head shake. It won’t be long.

Nix stands up again when the door cracks open. “I’m here all night,” Dick promises the kid’s mom, and Nix itches to reach out to him again. There’s a tech pushing an empty bed down the hall toward them though, so he shoves his hands back into his pockets instead.

“Okay?” he asks.

Dick stands for a moment, hand still on the doorframe, his head bowed. He doesn’t look at Nix, just shakes his head and continues down the hall.

Albert Blithe is better, improving despite all odds. Dick seems more perplexed than pleased by his progress, but at least he’s distracted somewhat from Dukeman. There are a handful of others, but it’s quiet. Accidents are accidents, but no one schedules surgeries around the holidays if they can help it.

Nix trails Dick through his rounds, lurking in the backs of his rooms and teasing Dick just enough to crack smiles out of the tired parents, set the kids to giggling if he can. Dick doesn’t need much help in that category though. Eventually, the hard set of his shoulders eases, and Nix slips away between one patient and the next, finally heading off to his own floor.

* * *

 

He busies himself for a few hours, but of all the night shifts to pull, New Year’s Eve really is the graveyard shift. Nix stops in to watch his patients watch New Year’s Rockin' Eve, and he snags some cookies from the break room.

It’s 11:45 when he lets himself make his way back through the halls, the mysterious transition from fourth floor to fifth without encountering anything more than a gentle incline between the old wing and the new, the hideous mural at the entrance to Pediatrics.

It’s louder in here, and Nix sees that the lounge is full of family and kids in hospital gowns, everyone who is able gathered to watch the ball drop. There’s a conspicuous lack of a certain redhead, usually visible easily among his throng of shorter patients. He catches Perconte’s eye, who shakes his head from where he’s locking down a young girl’s wheelchair, tucking IV lines safely out of the way with quick, practiced motions. “He’s down in Emergency. Consult on some party accident.”

“It’s alright,” O’Keefe adds cheerfully from where he’s setting out plates of cookies. “My girlfriend's mad I'm working tonight too.”

Nix blinks while Perconte glares at O’Keefe, making a series of violent hand gestures. 

It occurs to Nix that they are, perhaps, not as secretive as Dick had hoped, back when they started dating. Dick had been unusually hesitant when he’d brought it up, far from his usual steady certainty, fiddling with his spoon over dessert at the end of their third date — by his count. By Nix’s count, he had been stealing Dick away to eat food and hang out in an undeclared way for two months already, practically since the day Dick had arrived at bustling Metro General from his podunk county hospital somewhere in Pennsylvania. But Nix can admit they’d recently turned a corner. Sex changes a relationship. And then Dick pulled some conversational gymnastics that had Nix briefly stony-faced with horror that Dick wanted to break things off entirely before he simply asked if Nix minded not telling anyone at work.

“Are you ashamed of me?” Nix had teased, relieved and more delighted in the moment at the idea that he could embarrass Dick than offended.

“Since Day One,” Dick had assured him, Nix’s favorite little smile tugging at his mouth, belying the words. He shrugged, trying in vain to scrape up another spoonful of his sadly depleted sundae. “I don’t want my private life to be part of my job. It’s not you, and it’s not that I’m embarrassed.” He quirked an eyebrow at Nix. “My parents are already dying to meet you, if that’s not too much of shove in the opposite direction.”

Nix had laughed, though at the time, the idea of meeting Dick’s family had raised equal feelings of warmth and trepidation.

“I want work to be work,” Dick concluded firmly, and Nix shrugged, not having strong feelings about it one way or the other. He’d acquiesced without a fight, and he’d honestly been trying, though as he’d already established himself as Dick’s shadow before the conversation ever happened, he wasn’t sure how convincing they really were.

Now, staring between O’Keefe and Perconte, who hadn’t even waited for him to ask after Dick, Nix has to admit their secret might be only unsaid, rather than unsuspected.

“Thanks, Frank,” he says, leaving the rest of it for another day. “Any idea how long he’ll be?”

Perconte shrugs. “Might be a while. It’s busier down there, and you know how he is.”

Nix cranes his head wistfully toward the shrinking countdown on the TV again. “Don’t I ever,” he agrees. “Have fun up here. You guys need any help?”

“Nah,” O’Keefe grins, unrepentant, popping a bottle of sparkling cider and starting to pour it out into a tray of tiny plastic cups. “But you can stay and join the party.”

Nix eyes the tray of cookies, more sprinkles than actual cookie, and shrugs.

* * *

 

After the party Nix stops back to his own floor to sign off on an adjustment to one of his patient’s medications, and it’s an hour before he finds Dick in the back room, chugging coffee and reviewing files. “Missed you when the ball dropped.”

Dick glances up and then back down at his laptop, peering at the time almost in surprise. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I was with a patient. I heard everybody yelling. Happy New Year.” He rubs his eyes. “Ashley said she got a kiss at midnight though.” He drops his arms over the back of the chair, grabbing its base and stretching out his back. He doesn’t look worried about it, and he shouldn’t. Ashley is six years old.

Nix wags a finger at him. “Base lies. She kissed me. You can’t refuse a lady.”

“Well,” Dick smiles up at him. “She was very proud.” His eyes drop back to his laptop, and he yawns widely.

Nix drops into the chair next to Dick, stretching his arms out over the back. “It’s one a.m. now.” Dick nods tiredly. The room is quiet. “Midnight in Chicago,” he reminds him. Dick quirks an eyebrow, and Nix leans in. “Happy New Year, Dick,” he says, and kisses him.


End file.
